My Roommate's Tik Tok Fame Made My Life Hell (2018) - <AUTHOR> https://flip.lease/blog/my-roommates-tik-tok-fame-made-my-life-hell <comment><USER2> > He explained that his lease was set to renew, but for some (long, > complicated, confusing) reason, he couldn't put his name on it. My name > would be on the lease.

There's the red flag right there. Never ever ever do this with someone you have less than absolute trust in. They can bail at any moment and leave you in debt, and there's nothing you can do.

<comment><USER3> Seriously, after I read that I was like "every bad thing that comes after this is totally predictable". This is like worse than co-signing a loan. You're basically _solely_ signing a loan, all to take on the risk of someone you've never met.

Seriously, why are there no "avoiding scams" classes in schools?

<comment><USER4> Wouldn't those scammers be taking those same classes in schools and know not to scam in that particular way?

<comment><USER5> You'd still learn about _categories_ of scam, so the bar for scammers would be much higher than just "take this thing which worked back in the 1800s and apply it to naive kids".

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I am sorry, I am not buying this. You entered a 2 year contract with a person that you 've never met. That lives already there but only your name is on the lease. And who is around 20 years old but does plastic surgery to look like a teenager. (is that even a thing?)

And you know what? Screw it. Showing kids videos of pandas eating cucumbers and asking them to be like the pandas, is an ingenious use of narcissism to achieve what parents collectively wasted more energy than north korea's nuclear program ever did. Convincing their kids to eat vegetables.

\----

EDIT: I 'll contribute a story of my own.

A friend of mine is a photographer in Bay area and LA. Since the past few years he only works with instagram models, predominantly asian girls. I spent some time hanging out with him and two models that are also good friends. The first you notice is that... they are completely unremarkable. Shocking right? They didn't treat the waitress bad, and I was never ignored mid sentence in favor of checking instagram notifications. At least no more than a person with a 2-digit follower count would. And didn't experience a crazy fast do coke and club 6 nights per week culture. Quite the opposite actually, I witnessed the "I 'll take a picture with this drink, and drink only half of it because it has too many calories". I think the most "vapid" thing I witnessed was them being VERY jealous of another influencer who managed to get the "blue verified" icon. That's it. Don't get me wrong, they were kinda shallow, but not magnitudes more than people with no following, that's the thing! I think we love to hate them because they are treated as if they achieved some high- status with no effort. Sure. But we are forgetting that what is projected on social media is total fabrication. Both of them are off instagram now, since they got married (to well-off dudes). Was that an end goal? Was it gold digging? True love? None of my business actually.

<comment><USER7> All of these things sound plausible to me. I'm curious why you needed a throwaway account to post this, however.

<comment><USER8> About text:

> VP for a SF based startup. Anonymous here to speak my mind freely.

So it looks like a general throwaway account that's not associated with the person, just used for general posting.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> That was a pretty entertaining read. And technically an ad for flip, but I'm not mad - I think it's low key hilarious that they're sharing roommate horror stories to sell their product. That's ingenious.

<comment><USER10> Yep, flip ad not so in disguise.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Why not kick the panda guy out of the apartment? The lease wasn't in his name after all.

<comment><USER12> Presumably he couldn't afford the apartment by himself,

<comment><USER7> He didn't get paid.

<comment><USER13> He clearly did. And he was running out of savings, as he says.

<comment><USER7> He wasn't being paid, he gave examples where he had to cover for the guy's rent.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> None of this is new. LA is full of stories like this, going back decades - beyond the lunatic fringe of modern 'social media influencers', every 6 months LA gets a new wave of kids coming into the city to become the next big thing. Those of us who lived there and weren't involved in Hollywood often referred to the new wave of fresh blood as 'enthusiastic space cadets', because after a few months they'd disappear as if they'd gone to the moon.

</comment><comment><USER15> What an awful made-up story. I wish I did some actual work instead.

</comment><comment><USER16> Since the lease was in his name why not kick out Alec and find another roommate? Better than paying to break the lease.

</comment><comment><USER17> Well that's 10 minutes of my life I'm never getting back...

</comment><comment><USER18> It's an interesting read, but I wouldn't really blame Tik Tok fame in this case. Just a shitty roommate.

</comment><comment><USER19> That part about him marking everything with sharpy ink and glitter would have been nice for when I had my roommate from hell. I once dried myself off with a towel to half way discover some other traces of matter I didn't want to see... I tossed the towel.

</comment><comment><USER20> This "article" is a clever ad.

</comment><comment><USER21> This is literally just an ad for a competitor to Tik Tok. Super fake and /r/hailcorporate.

<comment><USER22> Ihavereddit

<comment><USER23> I guess everyone on HN is also on reddit. Like 100%.

<comment><USER24> I cold turkey quit in 2014 and haven't looked back - so happy to have that extra 45-60 minutes per day...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> > Three months into the hell of living with him, I saw his wallet sitting out > in the kitchen. He was passed out drunk in his room, so I looked in it

Oh okay, someone left some glitter in the bathroom so it's okay to root through their shit.

</comment><comment><USER26> Living with this person sounds miserable, and obviously they're in the wrong for everything, but it's still not cool to go through someone's wallet just because they leave it out just to check their ID.

<comment><USER25> Yeah, I've had bad roommates before but my reaction has always been to avoid them and want _less_ to do with them, not invade their privacy and find out more about them. I guess that doesn't make for as interesting social media posts [edit: or advertisements] though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Who sends a person they've never met money via Venmo, for a place to live that they've never visited in person? that's like the #1 rule of how now to get scammmed.

</comment><comment><USER28> hn should have a filter for these kinda inane marketing submissions

</comment><comment><USER29> i want to know who this 'muser' is now

</comment><comment><USER30> It's banned in India now.

</comment><comment><USER31> Interesting story, at the end it culminates into an ad for the website. It should be noted that people who are media-famous are often miserable and it looks like his roommate was silently suffering. Should OP have been a little bit more sympathetic towards that? I didn't see any mention of OP trying to, you know, talk his roommate through the issues like an adult?

<comment><USER32> Are you serious? Are you naive ? Is OP a psychotherapist?

<comment><USER31> I think most people are taught to communicate with people they have problems with. Communication is key to any relationship; you don't need to be a psychotherapist to know this. In the US, proper communication with roommates is a basic social skill that most people learn in college.

You can't expect to do nothing in a bad situation and then complain when it gets even worse. If you read a post about a guy complaining about loud neighbors, you'd be pretty skeptical if he didn't mention "asking them to turn the volume down" even once.

There's a lot left out of this story. Did OP even bother confronting the roommate about his problems? Did OP just remain passive-aggressive and sulk the entire time he lived there? I'm curious why OP left out that side of the story. You can't really hate on the roommate that much if OP didn't even vocalize his concerns to him.

<comment><USER33> I agree generally - stuff can be talked out. Where the line is drawn is the rent money. There's not a side of that story that can be okay.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


1k page views in the first 12 hours. - <AUTHOR>

I just finished building(http://www.theratemydate.com) and am amazed to find that people are already posting stories, over night the site has hit almost 1k page views and is still going up. It's not fully functional yet, however it's a start. I would appreciate any feedback on the site or even the principle behind the site.
I guess this is RateMyDate asking for a RMS
Thanks, GDH <comment><USER2> I like it, nice and simple and the feminine style is smart for your demographic. You may want to play that up by having a guys vs. girls aspect. The styling could use a little work (background vs. foreground contrast, the quotes on the title are a little tacky) and polished typography but it's a great start. Is it custom PHP or a script you used? I've been looking at a similar structure on a different topic using Wordpress but this is probably a much cleaner setup.

<comment><USER2> It's weird to have images instead of text/css for your Nav and Logo. You may want to change that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> The background hurts my eyes.</comment>


D3 for Mere Mortals (d3.js visualization tutorial) - <AUTHOR> http://www.recursion.org/d3-for-mere-mortals/

<comment><AUTHOR> I started on this before hearing about Programming for Mere Mortals (<http://stevenf.com/pages/book.html>). I was sort of bummed by the similar names but decided to keep mine because I tried to start from the beginning.

<comment><USER2> Don't worry about the name--I think it's a sufficiently general pattern that it makes sense to use it in multiple contexts, and I don't think it trademarked or anything (like "For Dummies" is).

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> "This Google App Engine application is temporarily over its serving quota. Please try again later."

There's a cache available here, sans images: [http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?sclient=psy&...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?sclient=psy&hl=en&site=&source=hp&q=cache%3Ahttp%3A%2F%2Fwww.recursion.org%2Fd3-for- mere-mortals%2F&pbx=1&oq=cache%3Ahttp%3A%2F%2Fwww.recursion.org%2Fd3-for-mere- mortals%2F&aq=f&aqi=g5&aql=&gs_sm=e&gs_upl=597l1398l0l1575l7l3l0l0l0l0l181l416l0.3l3l0)

<comment><USER4> I thought the whole point of GAE is so you can scale up when you get stormed by HN

<comment><USER5> (if you pay for it?)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is a really good tutorial, exactly what I've been waiting for before diving in to D3.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! I'm a fan of your writing so I appreciate the complement.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I've been using Protovis, and my main complaint about D3 is that it brings you closer to the DOM. I suppose that's the point, and is generally a strength, but it doesn't give you a nice abstraction layer for cross-vector-language bindings (svg vs vml). Things like SVGWeb help where SVG isn't available, but it's not quite as nice as direct VML support.

Can't wait for full SVG support in all common browsers!

<comment><USER8> I launched a small site using D3 (windhistory.com). It's great. SVG is now supported in Firefox, Chrome, IE, and Mobile Safari. The big limitation is IE7 and IE8, but if you can blow those users off SVG is fantastic.

<comment><USER7> Unfortunately, I can't yet blow those users off. The last set of visualizations I did with Protovis saw over 20% of its traffic in IE < 9\. I'd be ecstatic if I could ignore VML...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Nice article. Have just started using d3 myself. It might be worth mentioning that you can transform the svg coordinates if thats easier. Or the d3 data values, if the default coordinate system is annoying, eg if you want it centred.

I have been wondering about progressive enhancement for old browsers, display data as a table, then convert to chart if svg is present.

</comment><comment><USER10> From the page: _Anti-aliasing helps make text and curved lines look smoother, but can make straight lines appear fuzzy. Notice how the lines on the left are fuzzy, while those on the right are crisp._

On Firefox 5 on Ubuntu 11.04, the left lines are crisp, while the right lines are fuzzy. I haven't tried other browsers or platforms.

<comment><AUTHOR> I wrote this using WebKit (where it looks as I said) and didn't see the differences in rendering until after I was done. I will add a note about browser rendering differences.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> There is an article about D3 in tge latest free SVG Magazine: <http://svgmagazine.com/jul2011/>

</comment><comment><USER12> Could you compare this to raphael.js please?

<comment><USER13> Raphael is great at what it does, which is to provide a _graphics_ framework -- a layer of abstraction in order to easily manipulate SVG to create custom shapes and graphics.

Where D3 differs is in its focus. It's not just a graphics library, but a means of manipulating the DOM to facilitate data visualisation (often via SVG, but data-based manipulation of simple HTML elements is equally feasible).

This reliance on standards such as the W3C DOM and SVG APIs means that, unlike Raphael, there is minimal proprietary markup to learn, and it also brings a lot of flexibility and power: anything you can do with SVG and HTML you can wield with D3.

From the horse's mouth: <http://vis.stanford.edu/files/2011-D3-InfoVis.pdf>

<comment><USER12> Thanks!</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Good examples of open source SaaS? - <AUTHOR> What are the good examples of SaaS companies that are based on open source project? <comment><USER2> Wordpress, Mongodb, Ghost, Magento (previously)

<comment><USER3> Is Mongo really SaaS? I know Atlas their service for Mongo is but I think of Mongo Community (the Open source project) as a database you need to host. And IIRC the new license prevents anyone from hosting it as a service.

Not trying to be argumentative and would be interested to hear reasons why Mongo Community (the open source part) might be considered SaaS. Maybe my definition is too narrow.</comment></comment>


The True Cost of Bitcoin Transactions - <AUTHOR> http://moneyandstate.com/the-true-cost-of-bitcoin-transactions/ <comment><USER2> There is a small faction of the Bitcoin community working exceptionally hard to prevent any block size increase. I find their motives really baffling. They had some legitimate arguments a few years ago when discussion of this issue first started but those have all since been superseded by improvements in the protocol like xthin.

They now resort to distasteful tactics by running anyone out of town that even so much as suggests a block size increase. They are also working overtime to censor any comments that challenge their world view on the /r/bitcoin sub reddit which is why you see such hostile comments mentioned by the OP in response to users asking about slow transactions. /r/bitcoin is now just an echo chamber where yes men regurgitate the agenda of a select few. Eeveyone else is shadow banned.

edit: anyone that doubts this go make a comment in /r/bitcoin that contains the word "censorship" then view the page in incognito mode. The comment is immediately hidden by the automoderator. It really is nuts.

Article about the history of censorship in /r/bitcoin [https://medium.com/@johnblocke/a-brief-and-incomplete- histor...](https://medium.com/@johnblocke/a-brief-and-incomplete-history-of- censorship-in-r-bitcoin-c85a290fe43#.ihsr0xkhf)

<comment><USER3> > Eeveyone else is shadow banned.

On reddit, only admins can shadow ban, and they claimed that they stopped doing it over a year ago, in my understanding.

<comment><USER2> None of the comments I make in that sub seem to show up any more and the only reason I realized it is because I stopped getting any responses and checked from an incognito window. Sure enough nothing there. I know others who have experienced the same. Some people are outright banned as well.

<comment><USER4> I don't even bother with r/bitcoin anymore. The level of groupthink is insufferable, but hard for me to say whether it formed naturally or via direct influence (considering it's Reddit, both are likely)

<comment><USER2> I agree. I think it is a natural consequence of the censorship. If you censor comments and ban users that dissent people take the hint pretty quick that diversity of opinion isn't welcome and look elsewhere.

The one hope I have for this whole thing being resolved is that historically there are examples in Bitcoin of groups that were once very influential being superseded. Most notable is probably Ghash.io which had so much hash rate at the height of their power that people were afraid they could perform a 51% attack and that Bitcoin was doomed. Today they don't even register a percentage point.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This article completely ignores the block reward -- the real cost per transaction is more like $7 [0]. The blocksize really needs to change too, last time I did a bitcoin transaction, every recent block was 95%+ full. Its an arbitrary limit, but its contentious and political to change. It really made me want to avoid Bitcoin in the future.

[0][https://blockchain.info/charts/cost-per- transaction](https://blockchain.info/charts/cost-per-transaction)

<comment><USER2> The whole point of the block reward is to subsidize the network until transaction volume can grow to an equilibrium point where the network can be supported on fees alone. The fact that transaction volume is capped by the block size is troubling because it won't be able to grow to that equilibrium point.

<comment><USER6> As the value of Bitcoin grows, transaction cost grows relative to other currencies. Really transaction costs in strictly btc/byte have decreased. Pretty much everyone agrees the block size will need to grow at some point, including core devs. It is the current proposed method of introducing this change (via hardfork) that is questioned and scrutinized.

<comment><USER2> There is at least one prominent core dev that recently seriously proposed _decreasing_ the block size to 1/3rd of what it is currently. The problem is that the block size needed to be increased last year. Agreeing that it needs to be increased at some unspecified point in the future minus any specifics is just a stalling tactic.

<comment><USER6> Yes some devs believe there is centralization pressure of mining blocks caused by the propogation delay of 1MB blocks. Further increasing the size of blocks would thus increase centralization pressure. Changing any number of variables leads to emergent properties which change mining behaviors. Game theory needs to be considered before tweaking the consensus protocols of Bitcoin. The open source nature of Bitcoin allows for many opinions and critisms and hopefully many more proposals for change in the future.

<comment><USER2> The issue of propagation delays with bigger blocks was fixed with xthin blocks (aka: compact blocks) months ago. That is no longer a valid reason for limiting the block size.

<comment><USER6> There is very limited technical documentation on xthin so it is hard for the community to accept and test it. If Bitcoin were to implement xthin (or an alternative proposal such as compact blocks) it would be much better to release outside of the block increase. again the main contention is the mechanism for change that the Bitcoin unlimited enthusiasts want to impose, a contentious hard fork

And to clarify, the software may have been released (in Bitcoin unlimited's release), but is not used by the Bitcoin network as a whole. Very few nodes are running this implementation. And to many is untested/unproven

<comment><USER2> You are just spouting false propaganda now. The Core equivalent to Xthin, "Compact Blocks", has been released in Bitcoin Core since version 13.0.0

<comment><USER6> Please point out where I am spouting false propaganda.... You previously conflated xthin and compact blocks as if they were the same thing. Xthin is not being used by the network. And there are developers who have reasons to believe that increasing the block size will have a centralizing effect on mining. This is not "fixed" as you stated before.

<comment><USER2> You said: "If Bitcoin were to implement xthin (or an alternative proposal such as compact blocks) it would be much better to release outside of the block increase."

Fact: Both xthin and compact blocks are different implementations of the same idea. Both have already been implemented and released and are in active production.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Pretty funny to see that SEPA money transfer from Kraken to EU bank account costs just €0.09 for any amount. Arrival is guaranteed (though can be late too of course). So the cheapness of bitcoin and high cost of modern fiat transactions are both overstated.

<comment><USER8> The same way Uber was/is cheaper than Taxi, the cost is subsidised by someone else (Uber's investors, or in this case miners and speculators of Bitcoin)

<comment><USER7> I don't think physical automatic wire transaction cost is more expensive than SMS. High transfer/transaction fees in most banks are, on contrary, are subsidizing losses from other risky activities.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Appreciate the pragmatic, user-focused view. There's rarely empathy for new users in this space, and it's refreshing.

</comment><comment><USER10> One point which your post/this post is missing:

Transaction fee = power consumption + profit.

Bitcoin fee has to hit a fee amount which has less eco impact than a normal banking system.

</comment><comment><USER11> That's just the transaction fee paid to miners. You also have to consider the currency conversion cost of getting into and out of Bitcoin. Most sellers use Coinbase to immediately get out of Bitcoin. There's also a volatility risk.

</comment><comment><USER12> And if you look at hardware, energy and all the other costs, then you probably still end up in the $5 to $10 range as true costs per transaction. But this will not become fully visible until the block reward becomes negligible or the demand for new coins becomes essentially zero so that the deflation becomes visible.

<comment><USER2> If what you say is true then that would imply that miners are losing money. I don't think that is the case. Total network hash rate has strong growth. People don't normally invest huge sums to turn a loss.

<comment><USER12> They are not losing money, they get the block reward to sell. This in turn makes all Bitcoin users pay indirectly due to deflation but that is currently not visible because there is money flowing into the system.

But you can just do the math for yourself - the network hash rate is currently 3,160 petahash per second, 300,000 transactions are processed per day, an AntMiner S9 - the most efficient currently available miner as far as I can tell - consumes 98 joules per terahash and you can buy electricity for 5 cents per kilowatt-hour. With this numbers you end up at 1.24 Dollar per transaction and that is as optimistic as it gets when looking at electricity costs. Then add costs for hardware, rent, cooling, labor, profits, ...

<comment><USER2> Ah, you mean if you divide the block reward by transactions per block. Yeah in that case it's about $7 per transaction right now. That is why we need to increase on-chain transactions so that those fixed per block costs are amortized over a larger number of transactions.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> If Eric was serious about this he would have targeted this post at chinese miners who are stalling on activating segwit (which is a 2x blocksize increase and the foundation for instant & nearly free txs via the Lightning Network).

<comment><USER2> Segwit is not a 2x block size increase. That is marketing spin that Blockstream started spreading to try and fool people into supporting their agenda w/o having to compromise and raise the block size. Segwit does _not_ increase the block size in the sense that people are discussing and in some cases it might even make the transaction throughput much worse than the current system.

The whole reason people want bigger blocks is for higher transaction throughput on-chain. Segwit doesn't deliver that.

[https://np.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/5f507l/core_is_the_...](https://np.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/5f507l/core_is_the_new_big_blocker_37mb_mined_on_testnet/dahjg2w/)

<comment><USER13> You can play semantical games but segwit gives about 2x onchain capacity. And the only thing holding it up is a group of chinese miners/pools. Anyone truly wanting more onchain capacity should be engaging those miners/pools.

Of course that's not really what people bitching about tx fees want.

<comment><USER2> That's my point exactly people calling segwit a block size increase are playing semantic games. Miners and devs met a year ago and agreed on a path forward of segwit+hardfork blocksize increase to 2MB. Now they are trying to get people to activate segwit w/o a 2mb increase. It's not a mystery why this is happening and it isn't just Chinese miners that oppose it.

<comment><USER13> You admitted that "The whole reason people want bigger blocks is for higher transaction throughput on-chain."

And said that "Segwit doesn't deliver that".

Segwit delivers that.

<comment><USER2> The link I provided in my first response to you clearly shows that segwit can result in much lower transaction throughput.

<comment><USER14> The comment you linked to refers to blocks that were specifically made to be big using non-standard scripts that are larger than usual.

For the current mix of transactions happening on the bitcoin network, SegWit will give us an effective block size of 2.1MB (or 2.1x transactions compared to today), and a bit more over time as people start using more advanced scripts.

<comment><USER8> According to the video below SegWit creates 4x effective transaction space in the same 1MB block. I assume that is a theoretical ceiling unlikely to be achievable in reality?

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DzBAG2Jp4bg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DzBAG2Jp4bg)

<comment><USER14> No, it creates 4x effective transaction space in blocks that can now be as large as 4MB. It does not compress data more efficiently or makes transactions smaller in any way, it is a block size increase in every sense of the word.

The only ones who see this as 1MB block are old nodes that didn't upgrade to a segwit-compatible client. But for nodes that do upgrade, the block is simply larger.

But you're right in that 4MB is the maximum theoretical ceiling. That 2.1MB number I mentioned is what we get according to kind of transactions that we have on the network today. It'll go a bit higher as bitcoin users start using more advanced scripts, but not by much.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> What they did to Mike Hearn was a disgrace.

<comment><USER16> Who is "they" and what did they do to Mike Hearn? (I know Hearn left the Bitcoin community and pronounced it a failed experiment, and I know there was some harsh criticism for that assertion...but, did it go beyond that?)

<comment><USER15> Bitcoin core team. Ostracized him for forking BitcoinXT, impugned his reputation, etc.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> The "average" cost of a Bitcoin transaction is just that, the _average_. It's not (part of) the _true_ cost. The "true" cost is specific to the transaction. The last time I sent around some Bitcoin, it was around 20$ worth and the fee was whatever the client recommended me. It didn't amount to anything near the average. Why would I care about the average?</comment>


Why Software Patents Are Bad, Period - <AUTHOR> https://mollyrocket.com/casey/patents.html <comment><USER2> A friend who is a patent lawyer gave me a short spiel on why software patents are bad. I'll repeat it.

We have two types of intellectual property protection. Patents and copyright. And they are oriented towards too different categories.

Copyright is designed to create a working market for artists, writers, musicians, etc. These people's work is characterized be low output and hit and miss success. A writer might complete a two dozen works and two of which make any money. So you need protection on the order of a human lifetime.

Patents. Patents are totally misunderstood. The core of a patent isn't an idea. Nor is it the answer to a question, how do we do X. Really the core of the patent is the question itself. Knowing which questions are important is what is hard. And patents traditionally apply to physical things, because the physical world is very hard to reason about. It takes a lot of work to figure out and that is what needs protection. The proper period of protection is the course of a product lifecycle. So 20 years, something like that.

Software doesn't fit into either of these. Primarily because for most software the output is determined very mechanically from the requirements. (Unlike, gee a flying car would be nice, or write me a beloved novel that people will still buy 50 years hence). And software ages like yesterdays fish. His comment is, Windows 3.1, 25 years old and who cares. But it's copyrighted for another 75 years.

So software needs it's own category of protection, yes but that is much shorter.

<comment><USER3> Doesn't that argue for an ad hoc expiry? Product cycles in mobile phones and washing machines are different.

<comment><USER4> Yeah, it's an impossible to implement idea. Lawyers would game the hell out of that system.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> A great argument against software patents is this:

Patents are designed to "promote the progress of science and the useful arts".[1] In the case of software, patents are a net _drag_ on innovation and thus not worth the cost. Software developers are innovating _in spite_ of patents, not because of them.

[1] _" The Congress shall have power ... To promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries"_

<comment><USER6> > In the case of software, patents are a net drag on innovation and thus not > worth the cost. Software developers are innovating in spite of patents, not > because of them.

I agree with you, but for the argument to have any weight you need to show that it is true, not simply state it.

<comment><USER5> OP here, someone down-voted you so I up-voted you for making an excellent point.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Copyright is no substitute for patents. If you implement that same thing in another language, it would probably be different enough to avoid copyright infringement. So the fact that this author has licensed software under copyright has nothing to do with copyright's effectiveness in protecting their ideas.

Also, this author is apparently unaware that "pure software" patents have never existed, and do not exist today. This is especially true in the post- Enfish world we now live in.

The author is spot-on that obviousness is broken, that's true. Also a good point that patent quality is ill-defined. But those of us who work in this industry absolutely know it when we see it.

Overall, this article doesn't do a great job of explaining what is actually broken and why software patents suck. But saying that software as a class should not be protected like other forms of labor is insulting to software developers. What a software developer does is just as important as what a mechanical engineer does.

</comment><comment><USER7> Is there alternative to patent system for anyone who just want to have a prove that he was first (just in case)? Something like store patent in blockchain.

<comment><USER8> You can publish in Research Disclosure ([http://www.researchdisclosure.com](http://www.researchdisclosure.com)) which exists expressly for this purpose.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> What little experience I have with patents tends to push me to agree. It's a net negative for society.

\- I got a software patent once, on a blockchain related idea. Why did I patent it? Because my partners thought that if we didn't, we'd be in a bad position if things took off. So then we had to spend time and money researching what lawyer to get, explaining to them what the invention was, and so on. Time that could be better spent building a product. And to be honest, the idea was trivial to anyone who knows how to code. But that leads me to another point...

\- The fact that things can be patented leads to a culture of ideas being some sort of resource, like gold or oil. They're not. And we shouldn't deify people who have good ideas. Ideas are simply a natural consequence of exposure to an environment. Literally every idea ever has been "let's take X and Y, and use it for Z". Stick someone in the world, and they will have ideas. Sometimes two people will have very similar ideas.

\- A friend of mine is an inventor. Of the old school, the kind of guy who has a 3D printer because his inventions are objects rather than software. Like any tech guy, he gets ideas. Every time he gets one, he has to spend time looking for an existing patent. He's canned several projects because something turned up. For instance my wife started doing some research in the medical field because he'd come up with some device, and it basically ended up getting canned because someone in China had done something similar. He's spent significant time training himself in how to do a patent search, which is not a trivial thing to do.

The market should just be free. You invent a better mousetrap? Why shouldn't I make it and sell it? Maybe I can sell it more cheaply. Or I can make one that fits the needs of the consumer of some segment better. Why should I be stopped?

And what about the argument that it incentivises research? I don't know what the state of the evidence for this claim is, but I would think that just about any interesting line of research will be known to more than one group of researchers.

For instance, DNA was being looked at by several groups before Watson and Crick published. In science space, it's somewhat ok, maybe it's bad that one group gets a lot more credit than those who went down a different line, but those other guys can still publish papers with valuable information.

But if you're researching a cure for cancer (imagine it's just a certain unobtainium complex), and someone else finds it first, you are screwed. In fact, if you know that many people are making progress on a problem, you have a powerful disincentive to work on it. In fact, you could even have an equilibrium where a line of research is not pursued because someone else might get ahead.

The econ 101 idea that people will invent stuff on the basis that their investment will be protected is naive. They may never get to the point where they're protected.

Aside from that, look at fields where intellectual property is not protected from copycats. Imagine if you could only buy suits from one brand. Or if baseball caps only had one logo. And so on. There's plenty of fields where me- too marketing is beneficial to society.

<comment><USER9> This is comical because you made a rant about the proper use case of patents.

Disclosing an idea so people actually learn from it instead of redundant effort. In exchange they get a monopoly on the idea. Your friend was probably all "hey don't tell anybody about my super unique idea until they sign this NDA, I don't want them to steal it. Of course I haven't talked to anybody about the idea or gotten outside input and therefore have no clue if it exists already"

Your friend canned the idea because they were greedy, because they wanted first mover advantage. From your story they didn't even try to contact the patent holder to leverage resources, mind share, and God forbid, a licensing fee!

Don't conflate the problems with the patent system with the actual use case if the patent system.

<comment><USER10> You have some good points but personal attacks at GP's friends were uncalled for.

<comment><USER9> It wasn't an attack. I don't consider misunderstanding when to have trade secrets vs outside input, or greed, to be negative traits.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Google's passive sniffing may have paved the way for Wi-Fi privacy flap - <AUTHOR> http://www.xconomy.com/boston/2010/05/17/googles-passive-sniffing-technique-may-have-paved-the-way-for-wi-fi-privacy-flap-skyhook-ceo-says/

<comment><USER2> I thought this was precisely why white hat war drivers unmounted their TCP stack when scanning. Is that not the case anymore?</comment>


First US Exascale Supercomputer Now on Track for 2021 - <AUTHOR> https://www.top500.org/news/first-us-exascale-supercomputer-now-on-track-for-2021/ <comment><USER2> But who will build it? The article hints that Intel (KNL) and Nvidia(+IBM) are _not_ the front runners.</comment>


Hacker Monthly Issue #22 - March 2012 - <AUTHOR> http://hackermonthly.com/issue-22.html <comment><USER2> I was hoping for a longer article on WebSockets and SPDY than that. :(</comment>


Ask HN: Best payout ad network for your product? - <AUTHOR> I know adinplay, they have rewarded ads on mobile browser. Do you have feedback to share? <comment><USER2> Accepting payments for your app/service is a lovely "ad" network with the best payouts you can ever get compared to all the other ad networks. You should try it! Best of all, no privacy of malvertising concerns.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks but that is completely out of topic. I'm not speaking about IAP here but about ads. They are not excluding each other.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: SBC with 1gig ethernet and USB 3 - <AUTHOR> Is there any such product for cheap? <comment><USER2> Orange Pi 3, which is $30. I have no experience with these, but in general, if you venture away from the most popular SBCs, be sure to check the forums to make sure there's support to do what you want. I was using high spec SBCs for a long time but eventually decided it wasn't worth choosing the faster ones if it meant I spent much more time building packages and changing device tree.

</comment><comment><USER3> ODROID XU4: [https://www.hardkernel.com/shop/odroid-xu4-special- price/](https://www.hardkernel.com/shop/odroid-xu4-special-price/)</comment>


Does Quantum Theory Explain Consciousness? - <AUTHOR> http://news.discovery.com/space/does-quantum-theory-explain-consciousness-110526.html <comment><USER2> "Of course, quantum theory might explain consciousness, but that can only be proved or disproved through scientific method rather than by simply making stuff up."

Umm... I feel like I'm reading a horoscope.</comment>


U.S. Supreme Court to hear cases by telephone in May - <AUTHOR> https://www.axios.com/supreme-court-telephone-cases-trump-financial-records-7b9732fa-edfe-45ff-a3cb-25132ceb4078.html <comment><USER2> SCOTUS to hear arguments by telephone, but only days ago shut off extended absentee voting in Wisconsin.

Voters in urban precincts (read: minority voters) were forced to stand in long crowded lines for hours in the rain with only a handful of voting sites.

<comment><USER3> SCOTUS did not shut off extended absentee voting. They weren't even asked to comment on it. They were asked to comment on a decision by a federal judge that went above and beyond what the initial question to that court was. No one asked the district court to extend the election date, but they did anyway. SCOTUS said courts can't do that. They can only extend the date if they had been asked to do that. No one asked. Please don't twist the truth. SCOTUS explicitly stated that they're not answering the question of whether or not the date can be extended.

[https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/19pdf/19a1016_o759.pdf](https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/19pdf/19a1016_o759.pdf)

This is good. The powers of the Supreme Court are -- and should remain -- limited. We should not welcome authoritarianism simply at the service of convenience or even safety.

What should have happened is the Wisconsin state legislature should have met and extended the ballot. They are the sole entity that is blameworthy in this fiasco. Their decision would have been unquestionable in front of any court. We should stop expecting the courts to be able to rule by fiat. That is not their purpose, rightly so.

<comment><USER4> I think a lot of folks hoping for SCOTUS involvement were thinking more generally of it as a voting rights type issue.

If that was even an option for them to do is still relevant of course.

<comment><USER3> > I think a lot of folks hoping for SCOTUS involvement were thinking more > generally of it as a voting rights type issue.

Then they are asking for exactly the kind of 'answer to a question that was never asked' that the Supreme Court told all courts to stop giving.

<comment><USER4> Agreed. I can understand folks concerns, but also everyone should understand why the thing happened.

One doesn't preclude the other.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> For those curious:

There are 20 arguments that were to have been heard in March and April that were cancelled as a result of the coronavirus. Of these, 10 are now rescheduled by telephone in May. The other 10 are not rescheduled as of yet.

I've heard speculation in the past month that SCOTUS could simply choose to decide the easy 9-0 cases solely on the basis of the existing briefs, without oral argument. Given that the 10 arguments that are now scheduled for May includes all the "time-sensitive", big, and controversial cases, and the 10 not rescheduled appear to be more boring circuit split cases, this does increase my belief that they are planning on doing this.

As a side note, the case perhaps most relevant to many people in this site, Google v Oracle, is one of the ones not rescheduled for argument.

<comment><USER6> > As a side note, the case perhaps most relevant to many people in this site, > Google v Oracle, is one of the ones not rescheduled for argument.

Does this imply that it's one of the easy cases? If so, which way do you think they're going to decide?

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I wonder if only seeing the facts, and not seeing the faces or names of the parties would make for fairer rulings in public courts.

Plus, using remote techs would make organizing the whole thing way easier, and safer for the victim.

<comment><USER8> More fair, but voices still signal age and gender, so implicit bias remains.

<comment><USER9> And culture, and education.

<comment><USER10> as a fairly well off white dude i resent this attempt to make things less fair for me!

I like how fair it is atm. I fare pretty good thanks. (this is a joke before some muppet gets triggered)

<comment><USER11> You called?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I wonder how they operate as far as tech goes.

I worked at a company where we had an 'executive IT support team' that basically pushed all the buttons for executives when it came to conference calls and other technical events.

It was an effective system.

<comment><USER12> I have personally done telephonic hearings.

Basically, all the filings (motions & evidence) were handled by mail, clerks scheduled the call via phone, then on the day of the hearing the clerks got all the parties on the line — the judge entered the call, heard arguments, issued an order, dispensed with signatures, had the clerks right up the order, judge signed the order, clerks filed the order, and mail copies to both parties.

Tech wise, it was dead simple.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> For context, vast majority of US courts as a results of the virus are moving to telephonic hearings where needed or moving hearings to later dates as possible.

</comment><comment><USER13> US supreme court justices are very old people, with all except one having some heath issue.

If they get infected, the chance of a lot of them being incapacitated or dying is high.

<comment><USER14> And probably unprecedented.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Not surprised they are moving from in-person, but i am surprised they aren't moving to a video system; so much of communications are visual.

<comment><USER14> What marginal value does video provide over telephone?

<comment><USER16> To see if they are still awake?

<comment><USER14> Seems like a lot of work and bandwidth for something that could be simply addressed with "are you there?"

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> does anyone still use telephone for important decisions?

its all f2f or video isnt it?

Expect more not less

</comment><comment><USER17> This is going to drive the "Is RBG actually dead?" conspiracy people crazy.

<comment><USER18> Doesn't she ask a lot of questions? I suppose some people who are prone to QAnon type conspiracy theories will say that it's a deep fake synthesizer, but unless she goes radio silent I think they'll probably not act up.

<comment><USER19> No amount of factual evidence actually deters the CT.</comment></comment></comment>


When police kill, what seems obvious on video rarely leads to convictions - <AUTHOR> https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2019/03/30/when-police-kill-unarmed-black-males-what-seems-obvious-video-rarely-leads-convictions/ <comment><USER2> Maybe we should look at tightening up the rules around lethal force for police officers. The rules are there to protect the officer from harm but according to the stats, they are of little risk of harm compared to other professions.

[https://www.cnbc.com/2017/01/04/the-10-most-dangerous- jobs-f...](https://www.cnbc.com/2017/01/04/the-10-most-dangerous-jobs-for- men.html)

</comment><comment><USER3> I wish they'd publish the transcripts of grand jury proceedings. At minimum, the jury instructions.

<comment><USER4> I believe grand juries are always secret to protect those involved in the investigations.

<comment><USER5> Kind-of, not really. Prosecutors are supposed to divulge redacted transcripts under the Jencks act in case a witness for the grand jury contradicts himself in front of the real jury.

Prosecutors thumb their nose at this obligation all the time and are very rarely called out on it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> [https://outline.com/J2aW3J](https://outline.com/J2aW3J)

</comment><comment><USER7> There was a great Radiolab episode about this called _" Mr. Graham and the Reasonable Man"_.[1]

It seems that if you're ever in a situation where a police officer is afraid of you (or can convince a jury that they were -- which they almost always can, and routinely get specific, professional training on doing just that), then they can kill you and get away with it.

[1] - [https://www.wbez.org/shows/radiolab/radiolab-presents- more-p...](https://www.wbez.org/shows/radiolab/radiolab-presents-more-perfect- mr-graham-and-the-reasonable-man/c5d6fe9f-e888-4690-9e5f-84f8a925a4fb)

</comment><comment><USER8> Also related:

"Police release body-cam video of Willie McCoy killing, showing him asleep in car"

[https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/mar/29/willie- mccoy...](https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/mar/29/willie-mccoy-police- shooting-video-vallejo)

I submitted that here to HN [1] and it was flagged for removal, but I don't understand why.

[1] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19530128](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19530128)

<comment><USER9> Probably because it's deemed political? The topic policing on "controversial" issues is pretty intense. Or maybe because there's a snuff video on that page. For what it's worth, I actually saw that, read the article, watched the video, and upvoted it - and thought to myself "this will get killed if it gets traction". Looks like I was right.

I do think it's on-topic, gruesome as it is - it's the intersection of technology and authority fraud prevention, in the context of flawed systems with fallible humans. Another topic that falls in this category is the debate about voting machines, frequently discussed on HN.

<comment><USER8> Hm interesting, thanks for sharing your thoughts. I hope HN can learn to accommodate these kinds of articles - it feels important to talk about.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> News reports say the car Antwon Rose was riding in had two stolen handguns under the seat, a 9 mm and a .40 caliber gun. The car is believed to have taken part in a shooting a short while before, and Rose had a gun clip in his pocket.

Another rider in the car has been charged with the shooting the police were investigating.

It seems like a dangerous scenario. If my job required me to approach people fleeing from that car, I'd probably be very nervous for my own safety.

<comment><USER8> You would fear for your life when someone is running /away/ from you?

> While the driver was being handcuffed, Rose and the third occupant, Zaijuan > Hester, attempted to evade arrest by running from the car. Rosfeld fired > three rounds, and Rose was struck by all three.

<comment><USER4> Someone who is armed like that is not one I would want wandering the streets freely. This is why police give chase. Not just so they can be prosecuted but to keep dangerous people away from the populace.

<comment><USER11> Are you opposed to the Second Amendment?

<comment><USER4> Apparently you think the Second Amendment allows people to run from the police.

<comment><USER11> Running from the police is not a crime. Running from the police while armed is not a crime either.

<comment><USER4> I knew you were the type of person who would respond like that.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Paul Krugman: Can Europe Be Saved? - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/16/magazine/16Europe-t.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1&hp

<comment><USER2> Krugman's article seemed to be a relatively unbiased summary of an academic area called Optimal Currency Area: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optimum_currency_area>

A "Currency Area" has benefits and drawbacks. The benefits are mostly microeconomic in nature. For instance, if I can contract to buy something from you in the future without having to hedge currency risk or change money, that's a benefit.

The drawbacks are mostly macroeconomic in nature. For instance, Germany is doing OK now while Greece is suffering. However, they share one currency (the euro). If they had two currencies, Greece could devalue its currency, which would boost its economy.

The drawbacks can be mitigated by things like labor mobility, e.g. Greeks fleeing Greece to go to Germany where the economy is better. This happens in the US all the time. However, Greeks and Germans don't share a language, so this limits labor mobility.

Similarly, price/wage flexibility is important, but again, Europe does poorly on this test because its unions and work rules.

Another way to mitigate currency area drawbacks is for the region to have a "transfer union" that can use fiscal policy to spend more money in struggling regions. However, Germans don't like the idea of giving money to profligate Greeks who waste it (this is their view).

All in all, most economists don't think that Europe is an Optimal Currency Area and that weak countries will be kicked out of the Eurozone.

</comment><comment><USER3> A couple of places where I disagree with Krugman:

 _...as the earlier Ireland-Nevada comparison shows, the United States works as a currency union in large part precisely because it is also a transfer union, in which states that haven't gone bust support those that have._

I disagree strongly with his Ireland-Nevada comparison because the US Federal government is currently bailing out homeowners and banks who got into trouble as a result of Federal policy. The fact that the US housing bubble was most severe in California, Florida, and Nevada has little to do with the state and local government policies there and more to do with geography and migration patterns related to demographics. In Europe, the Germans are basically being asked to bail out governments who got into trouble as a result of malfeasance or bad policy that had nothing to do with the German government. Until the Feds start explicitly bailing out states like California or New Jersey (which could certainly still happen), it seems to me as if they are really just bailing out themselves.

 _Since these bonds (E-bonds) would be guaranteed by the European Union as a whole, they would offer a way for troubled economies to avoid vicious circles of falling confidence and rising borrowing costs._

They would also offer a way for these economies to take advantage of lower interest rates to continue to act irresponsibly, which seems a likely scenario given the history of this situation. Political institutions (and people) being what they are, it seems like extreme amounts of pain is likely to be the only effective tool to get them to actually move away from spendthrift policies. The Euro would probably be in a better position if it came with an explicit requirement that the bonds of member countries could not be purchased by the Union itself or by other Union members, which might have reduced the appetite for the bailout trade that major banks were so happy to engage in (although such guarantees can certainly be circumvented, as the Argentine example shows).

</comment><comment><USER4> Only read the first page. But, it sounds like a better title would be "Can the Euro Be Saved?"

</comment><comment><USER5> Like always, mr. Krugman gets it wrong. Of course he blames the single currency, when he should have blamed things like "rules governing worker firing helped limit job loss, while strong social-welfare programs ensured that even the jobless retained their health care and received a basic income.". There's one thing that I've learned as a programmer, there's no silver bullet, you can't have both "strong" social programmes and a dynamic and versatile economy. You can't both stay at home doing nothing for most of the day (look at the 35-hour week in France, for example) and still dream at a life-style consisting of holidays abroad and 2 cars per family.

<comment><USER6> As opposed to the US where everybody over the age of 30 is afraid to quit their jobs to start their own company because they'll lose their health insurance? And I see lots more Americans staying at home getting fat in front of the TV than I do Europeans.

\- 5 extra hours a week and 4 extra weeks of vacation a year just give you more time to work on your side projects to get out of that corporate job quicker.

\- in some countries, unemployment insurance provide resources to help you start your own company

\- "overseas vacations" are a lot cheaper cause you can buy a plane or train ticket for 50 euros to get to the Mediterranean

\- Nobody wants two cars because they provide more hassle than benefit in an area where everything is close by and available via public transit that's clean, convenient and used by everybody, not just the poor.

\- but most importantly, if you fail, you know that your kids won't starve and that your own retirement will be comfortable. As everybody knows, fear of failure is the biggest impediment to starting your own company.

\- in return, you pay 10% higher taxes, which you don't miss one bit once you make that first million.

The biggest reason the US is more entrepreneurial is purely cultural. In France, one of the biggest aspirations is to go to Polytechique and become a bureaucrat. In the US, that's for lazy people who want a secure job. So France has a much better bureaucracy and a much worse entrepreneurial scene.

<comment><USER7> Afraid? Perhaps. But even so the American job market and economy is far more dynamic. A lot of people over 30 do quit their jobs and start their own companies.

<comment><USER6> And so do a lot of Danes.

As I said, the reasons are primarily cultural. Some things in Denmark make it easier, some things make it worse. Culture is why YCombinator is in the bay area, even though higher taxes and high prices make it one of the worst areas in America to start a company if you exclude cultural factors.

<comment><USER8> This is very much true. I live in a country with a high living standard, comfortable work arrangements and many (government-sponsored even) options for taking time off.

Yet we have one of the lowest startup rates in Europe (not just in tech).

It's _definitely_ a culture thing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I really take a bow. This article show why this man has won Nobel Prize. It is really tough to explain such a complicated problem with so easy to digest words.

BTW I am German.</comment>


Has anyone gotten linux working on Macbook9,1? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> I tried about a year ago and gave up...

But it looks like it might've worked if I had looked here: [https://wiki.debian.org/InstallingDebianOn/Apple/MacBookPro/...](https://wiki.debian.org/InstallingDebianOn/Apple/MacBookPro/9-1)

Which points to the 9,2 page, saying "everything works fine now," which sounds promising.

<comment><AUTHOR> that's macbook pro ... I'm talking about the 12" MacBook retina ...

<comment><USER2> Ah, sorry for misreading that.

At least after quickly Googling, it looks like some people have gotten that 12" MacBook to work with various distros (most complaints being about wifi not working).

I'd be interested to know if you can get it working, since I'd like to try it again too.</comment></comment></comment>


Data vs. Analytics - StarWars Data Lessons from the Dark Side - <AUTHOR> http://blog.panoply.io/awaken-the-power-of-the-data-force-with-analytics-infrastructure <comment><USER2> Data Lessons from the Dark side LOL... Most Data lessons are learned by shedding blood!

</comment><comment><USER3> LESSON #5 -- "I saw…a city in the clouds."</comment>


From 3% to 38%, America Has Seen a Staggering Growth in Passport Holders - <AUTHOR> http://dadaviz.com/i/3323

<comment><USER2> I can understand the growth--citizens of the US could travel into Canada with minimal identification in the old days. And I can understand it not being higher. The US is a very big place, with much to see for one thing. And some of the habits formed in the days of cheap gasoline and expensive airfares persist among people who could fly abroad for cost of a long road trip. (Well, the airlines have the whip hand again on pricing, but still...)

</comment><comment><USER3> Anyone else find it crazy that it's still _only_ 38%? Just for interest, I looked up the stats for the UK, and this [1] article from 2009 gives the figure of 80%.

[1] [http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/3127696.stm](http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/3127696.stm)

<comment><USER4> The entire UK is the size of a small US state. You can literally just get drunk, black out, and wake up in a different country. (Citation: [http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2509837/Teenager- wen...](http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2509837/Teenager-went-drunken- night-Oldham-woke-PARIS.html)) In the US, you could travel the equivalent distance of London to Serbia and still not leave the country. That has a huge impact on passport statistics.

<comment><USER5> That argument falls apart if you look at European countries within the Schengen area. The US is less populous and less diverse than the Schengen free travel area, but most EU countries have drastically higher rates of passport ownership than the US. The immense opportunities for passport-free travel do not seem to deter Europeans from getting a passport.

I think the fundamental explanation for the disparity is that Americans are starved of vacation time, so find it much less appealing to travel internationally. The EU minimum of four weeks paid vacation is exceptionally generous by US standards; In many EU countries the average worker receives five or six weeks of paid vacation, which is almost unheard of in the US.

<comment><USER4> The U.S. is also larger than the Schengen area. Plus, air travel from Europe is considerably cheaper than air travel from the United States, while gasoline is much cheaper in the United States.

Besides, we were comparing to the UK, which is not part of the Schengen area but is right next to it. Of course Britons are going to have passports.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> While interesting... is there no commentary or discussion about the causation? Thanks for posting the graph, but I'd be very curious why people think this has happened.

<comment><USER7> My theory: during the cold war, there was "America is the best" propaganda which even though it was really anti-Soviet, ended up discouraging people from travelling _anywhere_. Berlin wall fell in 1989, the cold war propaganda tapered off, and travel to foreign countries slowly ramped up.

<comment><USER7> May I ask why the downvote? My speculation may or may not be correct, but despite @brandonmenc's objection, I still think it's a possible factor. It certainly matches the attitudes of my relatives and other adults when I was a child growing up in the 80's. It's also more closely tied to the start of the trend line than some of the other theories in this thread, and was posted as a good faith response to @cguess.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Interesting, that growth pattern looks linear.</comment>


What Is Your Dream Job? - <AUTHOR> http://garyharan.com/2010/04/22/what-is-your-dream-job.html

<comment><USER2> I know a little kid who was the son of a family friend and who grew up to become a smart young man and high school valedictorian. Jonathan said in his valedictory address something insightful: "Work does not necessarily make you happy but it may give you the means to be happy."

Don't put all your eggs in one basket, one dream job, one relationship. Treat your job as a good friend, don't become too emotionally involved with it. Don't just get a paycheck from your job - if you do, you are _underpaid_. Do things outside of work. If you work with computers all day and you don't do other stuff that does not involve computers, consider new hobbies that pertain to interests. For example, if you like sexy iPhone app UIs like on <http://wellplacedpixels.com>, consider going to an art gallery with friends to see what kind of art is out there and why you like certain pieces of art.

</comment><comment><USER3> There's a running joke among my friends that I "can't hold down a job" more than a year or two, and for completely different reasons than most. Reading this post makes me wonder if that's why. I like changing things for the better. Not necessarily because something is new, but more for the customers and employees. Where I am now I can't do that, except in the smallest increments. I feel like I have the potential to do so much, but the red tape and flexibility just isn't helping.

<comment><USER4> I changed jobs regularly about every 18 months for the first 10 years of my career, for mainly the same reasons as you do. What I found was that I would start a new job with a lot of hopeful optimism, immediately making huge amounts of progress, impressing my co-workers and managers with my hard work and new and improved approaches to problem solving. After 90% of the low hanging fruit improvements had been implemented, the last 10% would be hung up by red tape, unflexible co-workers, bad management, and the general suckitude that almost every company has.

I would get frustrated and start looking for greener pastures. After doing this for the first several years, I realized this approach was better as a contractor than a full time employee. I did contracting for several more years, until I found a company that just "sucked less" than the others I'd worked for.

One thing you will learn as you have more experience: All companies suck to work for (unless you started it yourself). Some just suck less than others. Try to find one that you can at least tolerate the suckage. When I get bummed out about idiotic co-workers, management that doesn't know what the hell they're doing (example: no backup generators for a data center with $millions in equipment), I just close my eyes and try to meditate on the six figure salary and five figure annual bonus. That usually makes me forget how much it might suck at the time. Oh, and the fact that I still get to play architect and design some cool systems.

Good luck!

<comment><USER3> Thanks for the great advice. I've been considering breaking out and doing my own contracting, and have done it before, but I'm in need of stability. Hopefully I'll find that place that just 'sucks less' soon; it just hurts to be in what others would consider 'the perfect job' and feel so empty. Good to hear I'm not the only one that struggles with this.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I think I've got my dream job, but three years ago I said the same thing about the last job, and three years prior I said the same thing about the job before that, so your guess is as good as mine what my dream job will be three years from now.

</comment><comment><USER6> Please watch this inspiring video on youtube: Did You Know 3.0

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jpEnFwiqdx8>

1:10 : The US Department of Labor estimates that today's learner will have 10-14 jobs by the age of 38

1:16 : 1 in 4 workers has been with their current employer for less than a year. 1 in 2 has been there less than five years

</comment><comment><USER7> <http://www.picturesforsadchildren.com/index.php?comicID=86>

Pretty much sums it up!

</comment><comment><USER8> Maybe instead of a dream job, the question should be "what is your dream life?"

Found this on "BetterExplained" a while back. It's about 3 minutes and well worth it:

<http://www.neticons.net/music_life/>

I love the last line...

<comment><USER9> Is something supposed to happen after "Click to Play?" I'm just staring at a blue coffee cup stain.

(Linux, FF 3.5.9)

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> One thing I liked about this article is that it's not about "working on technology X" or "making a lot of money" or "having a great title", but about challenge, learning, and passion.

I finally realized last year that my dream job is having a bunch of kids and helping them grow into adults. In a way, it's not so different from Gary's dream job.

<comment><USER11> you sir, have balls of steel.

could you comment on how things have changed for you over the years? I matched your dream job with _patio11_ 's comment : " _I think I've got my dream job, but three years ago I said the same thing about the last job, and three years prior I said the same thing about the job before that, so your guess is as good as mine what my dream job will be three years from now._ "

<comment><USER10> I grew up as a smart kid with an aptitude for math and computers, much like my dad and my oldest brother. Went through high school, college, and grad school wavering between math and computer science, thinking some sort of math-with- computers would be my dream job. During grad school I made my first big shift: I realized I really liked teaching, and thought I might become a math teacher.

Shortly after, I participated in a program that paired me with a public school teacher. I liked working with the kids, but I felt like I was out of my depth (didn't have proper training to work in the classroom) and the teacher didn't like me personally (my politics weren't acceptable to her.) Here, I made my second big shift: I realized I liked teaching, but I didn't like schools, either in terms of their structure or the prevailing politics.

I ended up burned out, left grad school, and got a low-paying job teaching in an aerospace museum. Here, I had solid training, and nobody ever got on my case about my political views. At first I was disappointed that I wasn't using the skills I'd developed in grad school, and I began to envision some sort of software/systems engineering position as my dream job (my wife is a systems engineer.) Over time, I realized I didn't really care that much about the specific math or engineering stuff I'd done, I just wanted to do something worthwhile, and inspiring future generations was just as worthwhile as building airplanes.

It was in this context that my wife and I started talking seriously about having kids. Over the course of many months, we'd discussed all sorts of strategies for avoiding child care -- me working 4 10's with her part time, or both of us working 3 11's on alternating days, or all sorts of crazy schemes. Eventually I realized: when we had this discussion, she was really enthusiastic about her career, while I was really enthusiastic about kids. One of us made the suggestion that she could work full time and I could watch the kids, teach them, and be a "domestic engineer" (that is, create processes and systems to run the household), and I realized we'd just described my dream job.

So for me, it was a process of convergence -- several steps leading me closer to the realization that this is what I want to do with my life. I don't think it'll change in the same way patio11's dream job changes every 3 years (but good call on citing that comment; it was what originally inspired me to respond.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Unemployed, with just enough to magically pay the rent.

<comment><USER13> I did that for the last 18 months and have recently taken a temp (6 month) programming gig to amass some capital before I revert to crumbbumhood.

On the one hand - the professional slacker lifestyle is pretty brilliant: youu sleep when you're tired, work on whatever you like, and you can finally get that stack of books read.

On the other hand - the lifestyle can be somewhat isolating, especially so when you find that everyone else is asleep when you're awake. It becomes too easy to lose yourself in tangents, endlessly exploring to eternal infecundity.

So - while I agree - it is a great lifestyle - I make one small addendum: to be "magically unemployed" along with two or three other persons whose interests all overlap.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> "It's not having what you want It's wanting what you've got" -- S. Crow

<comment><USER15> I like that quote. Also, sometimes, what you want is not what you need. (that's also my philosophy when meeting with clients: even when they "know" what they want, I try to find out what they really need)</comment></comment>


Ask HN: What's your cause? - <AUTHOR>

I really want to commit myself to volunteering at least a day or two a month to a non profit organization. My problem is that I'm not quite sure I know where I want to volunteer. I'm looking for a cause that I'm passionate about so I've come to HN to ask what are you passionate about? Where do you volunteer? Thanks everyone <comment><USER2> Start with the bigger picture and decide what is a big problem you see and want to be a part of the solution. Once you know that, you can look at the different things you can do to help eradicate that problem.

For me it was helping the homeless. There are many ways to help homeless people, but I think the best way is showing them that someone still cares just if even to only help serve a meal. The St. Vincent de Paul Society has many things here you can do. I suggest serving meals where you get a chance to interact with them. The meal is great way to help at a basic level but where you can do these people the most good is to just smile and ask how their day is going... Show them kindness. Give them hope.

That is the way I feel I can best help the homeless at this moment.

</comment><comment><USER3> I'm not actively involved in anything in a volunteer capacity at the moment, but for pretty much the entire decade of the 90's I was a volunteer firefighter.

Now, firefighting is too big a time sink for me, especially in terms of being as active as I was back then. But if I could free up some time to do _something_ volunteer related, my first choice would be to volunteer as a tutor for the local Literacy Council.

I've also toyed with trying to squeeze in some time to teach some free programming classes at the local hackerspace, including maybe a kid centric thing using Scratch or something of that ilk. But right now I work a full-time job AND am working on a startup, so I've kinda put that stuff on the backburner for a while.</comment>


Why Are There So Many 17th Century Paintings of Monkeys Getting Drunk? - <AUTHOR> https://resobscura.blogspot.com/2017/05/why-are-there-so-many-17th-century.html <comment><USER2> I like the following anecdote of Darwin's (though it's from quite a bit later in time):

Many kinds of monkeys have a strong taste for tea, coffee, and spiritous liquors: they will also, as I have myself seen, smoke tobacco with pleasure. (6. The same tastes are common to some animals much lower in the scale. Mr. A. Nichols informs me that he kept in Queensland, in Australia, three individuals of the Phaseolarctus cinereus [koalas]; and that, without having been taught in any way, they acquired a strong taste for rum, and for smoking tobacco.) Brehm asserts that the natives of north-eastern Africa catch the wild baboons by exposing vessels with strong beer, by which they are made drunk. He has seen some of these animals, which he kept in confinement, in this state; and he gives a laughable account of their behaviour and strange grimaces. On the following morning they were very cross and dismal; they held their aching heads with both hands, and wore a most pitiable expression: when beer or wine was offered them, they turned away with disgust, but relished the juice of lemons. An American monkey, an Ateles, after getting drunk on brandy, would never touch it again, and thus was wiser than many men. These trifling facts prove how similar the nerves of taste must be in monkeys and man, and how similarly their whole nervous system is affected.

\- "The Descent of Man"

<comment><USER3> This reminds me of one of my favourite documentaries on baboons: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YAy8LUmXPmo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YAy8LUmXPmo)

<comment><USER4> I am impressed that you like baboons so much that you have developed a preference for a favorite documentary about them. This conjures an image of you having a shelf full of many different baboon documentaries but having one set aside as the favorite.

<comment><USER3> Ha! There should be a comma after "documentaries". Unfortunately, this is the only one I know about baboons :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> [http://www.artandarchitecture.org.uk/insight/cutler_monkey/c...](http://www.artandarchitecture.org.uk/insight/cutler_monkey/cutler_monkey01.html)

a little understanding of art history would indicate that the appropriate thing to do is understand the context for monkeys at the time of painting.

e: I don't mean to be _overly_ snarky here, but most Renaissance/Enlightenment art is done in a symbolic language, and objects depicted are words, with the arrangement often in a particular grammar, with the context serving as part of the message. It's not particularly difficult to learn this or to access basic symbolic meanings. I don't think the author (hi there), has done enough due diligence. Sorry, Author.

<comment><USER6> dont worry, ex wife is an art history professor ... 0 chance anyone on here will say something that is widely accepted in academia.

<comment><USER7> More importantly, what statements would actually be widely accepted?

It's poor form to post such a blithe dismissal without explaining what we're missing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Interesting article, but anyone using the Blogger platform should know that the UX on a touch interface is a nightmare. There's roughly a 2 out of 3 chance that any action taken to zoom in on the page or an image will result in navigating away from the current post.

Blooger is one seemingly moribund service I wish Goggle would spend some dev time on.

<comment><AUTHOR> Author of the post (and blog) here. I agree with you. I keep assuming that Google will update Blogger but it increasingly seems like it will end up going the way of Reader and will just get ignominiously phased out someday. If anyone has any suggestions of a good alternative, I'd be interested to hear them.

<comment><USER9> Self-hosted wordpress, etc

<comment><USER10> No. Self-hosted anything is not a good alternative for someone running on blogger. The entire reason for using blogger is to not worry about any of the things associated with hosting your own service.

(That's not to say you shouldn't self-host but it's not a great suggestion for someone who made the decision to use blogger in the first place.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Because it's hilarious?

<comment><USER12> What makes it funny? you might find that the answer to that question is rather more complex than you think.

<comment><USER13> We use Microsoft Link for our phone system at work (recommendation: NEVER use MS Link).

My first thought was to compare it to "Lancelot Link, Secret Chimp" [1] which was a slightly bizarre show in the 70's, mostly intended to be funny.

I didn't much like it then, and couldn't even watch a whole episode this year. In discussing it with a co-worker, he pointed out that some people find monkeys inherently funny, so they'd get a kick out of it.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lancelot_Link,_Secret_Chimp](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lancelot_Link,_Secret_Chimp)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Good and something fresh here. I think the reason behind this is humans means us, becomes monkeys after heavy drinking.

</comment><comment><USER15> Oh... it's not just paintings. Check out Thomas Weelkes's "The Ape, the Monkey, and Baboon", from _Ayres or Phantastick Spirits_. From what I read it was intended to poke fun at certain regulars at the Mermaid Tavern.

</comment><comment><USER16> > _In other images, monkeys are also shown in the guise of alchemists and drug > sellers ..._ "

If Vince Gilligan were to create a 17th century drama chronicling the misadventutes of underworld simian alchemists who sell drugs, I would complain.

<comment><USER16> Rather, I would _not_ complain.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Fermented Marula fruit maybe? [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sclerocarya_birrea](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sclerocarya_birrea)

</comment><comment><USER15> Because poker hadn't been invented yet?

</comment><comment><USER6> Carlos Slim has a few interesting monkey period pieces at his foundation's museum in CDMX.

</comment><comment><USER18> Because artists have been depicting the political system for centuries.

<comment><USER19> True, "monkey" seems to have held up well since the 1800's: [https://goo.gl/MEg99z](https://goo.gl/MEg99z)</comment></comment>


Q: Why are biped robots hard in 2019? (COTS motors, sensors, off-board power) - <AUTHOR> <comment><AUTHOR> This Robotics Stack Exchange discussion seems pretty good:

[https://robotics.stackexchange.com/questions/10616/why-is- it...](https://robotics.stackexchange.com/questions/10616/why-is-it-so-hard- to-walk)

This one, less so:

[https://robotics.stackexchange.com/questions/8129/why-are- bi...](https://robotics.stackexchange.com/questions/8129/why-are-bipedal- robots-difficult)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Apparently people are interested in the question, but no one is answering. Hmm.</comment>


GNU Shepherd (Init system and service manager) - <AUTHOR> https://www.gnu.org/software/shepherd/ <comment><USER2> You would make a good case if you supported at least part of systemd's syntax for unit files (nothing popped up when I skimmed manual).

It would be a good start for being a drop-in replacement for systemd in other distributions, instead of requiring sysadmins to rewrite all the services.

<comment><USER3> And this is how the lock-in happens...

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Init system and service manager, configured via Guile Scheme. Pid 1 of the GuixSD distro already.</comment>


Leap Years: we can do better - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qkt_wmRKYNQ <comment><AUTHOR> This started out as expected, but then took a slightly surprising twist. Don't judge it by the first few minutes - it gets better, and more technical.</comment>


Rare book experts join forces to stop tome raiders - <AUTHOR> http://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/may/17/rare-book-experts-join-forces-to-stop-tome-raiders <comment><USER2> A very ugly crime.

To me this also suggests that if you own or control one of these texts that its literally your duty to the rest of humanity to make sure it's scanned and available for free and infinite copying SOMEWHERE.

We might lose track of the digital version but without it it's inevitable that these volumes will decay and be lost forever.

What is the the general ethical stance about this in the rare book community?

<comment><USER3> The rare book community is the community that has facilitated these crimes. There are more black hats than white hats--no money at all for white hats in this business.

Private book traders make all their money by selling unique items to rich people. The rich people doing the buying want to own something special that other people can't have.

Bibliophiles are technophobes. They love the paper page, the book binding, the book stacks. They don't love the content of the books, and they don't want to share them. They have "aristocratic" ideas about who deserves to have access to these special items. Every last one of them is a hoarder that wants to have things that others can't have.

They hate book scanners. They hate ebooks. They hate digitization. It just threatens their business, their status, their one-of-a-kinds.

Rare books is all about prestige and exclusivity. Digitization is a threat to this.

I'm a book scanner--someone who loves the contents of books more than the objects--and my kind are scorned like the gargoyles from Snow Crash.

<comment><USER4> What's the state of the art in damageless scanning? Do you still have to rip the pages out in order to get good, fast results?

<comment><USER5> [https://archive.org/details/InternetArchive- Tour](https://archive.org/details/InternetArchive-Tour)

This is a video of the Scribe machine that the Internet Archive built for book scanning. It uses two commodity digital cameras to image the pages. The computer driving the process is running Linux and gPhoto. They're also working on a tabletop version, which will be easier for smaller institutions to set up and use.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Any book that is a "cultural heritage" item needs to be scanned, and it's the duty of the library/museum to do it. The scans don't even have to be that good - a photo with a hand-held iphone is good enough for a quick first pass.

If budget is a problem, scan a couple, sell them, and use the proceeds to scan the rest.

<comment><USER7> I'd extend that to "anything which is now in the public domain".

 _a photo with a hand-held iphone is good enough for a quick first pass_

Not to mention far less damaging to the original since it doesn't have to be manipulated as much, and quicker too. Distortion is a problem but postprocessing can give good results.

The last time I was at a library, which seems like ages ago, there were (paid) photocopiers for those who wanted to copy a page or two. With everyone carrying high-res cameras in their pockets, I wonder if they're still around.

<comment><USER6> People who scan rare books seem to be obsessed with pixel perfect scans, and so what happens is it doesn't get done. A 90% scan is infinitely better than no scan when the library burns down or the books are stolen.

Heck, the libraries in the article didn't even know what they had, so they don't know what was lost.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> If you want to learn more about this kind of crime, I highly recommend a little book by Miles Harvey called THE ISLAND OF LOST MAPS: A TRUE STORY OF CARTOGRAPHIC CRIME. Fascinating whodunit regarding thieves who would go into rare book collections and quietly use a razor blade to carefullytear out an ancient map inside some hundreds-of-years-old book, and often then sell it for huge sums.

</comment><comment><USER9> Part of the impact of these thefts is difficulty of legitimate access by the public.

Allow me to explain with an example literally from a few days ago. I turned up in Madrid for a few days, and visited the national library wanting to see what they held both in terms of materials regarding the area of China I am compiling a history on, and in terms of early Spanish records of island Southeast Asian (eg. Philippines) multihull vessels like the _vinta_.

I am forced to go through airport-like security, have my face recorded on an Axis IP-based CCTV camera, sent to a room with three enormous desks each with an official library bureaucrat. I explain my case, and am rapidly informed that should I wish to view anything at all _before 1950_ then I must apply for a research card. Sure! What does that require? Photo ID - passport, check. Proof of address - what? Bank statement accepted, download one, OK, check. Proof you are from an inexplicit list of recognized national, educational or cultural institutions. I'm an admin for Wikipedia, writing articles specifically on traditional multihull vessels that have hundreds of thousands of pageviews and have been front page featured, but that didn't seem to count. They wouldn't let me in. The 'librarian' (who I feel deserves no such title) actually went so far as to attempt to 'explain' to me - "You see, it's like a _club_. The universities, the libraries, ...".

That very same night, I had dinner after visiting a diplomat in their home. Some friends of theirs were also present, one of whom a reigning library science academic of repute within that field in Madrid and Spain. I explained the horrible experience I had attempting to dedicate some of my minimal time in the city to using their national library. In return, it was explained that the difficulty of using the place is a direct response to the theft of a number of extremely rare texts some years ago, over which people lost their jobs. The problem is frequent, and even international academics all face it. I was of course also offered a letter of reference, but did not have enough time left in the city to visit a second time... so the resources remain unconsulted. (The irony of the fact that we dined on Mahgreb cuisine was not lost on me: the former Muslim rulers of Cordoba/Andalusia were great sponsors of libraries, translation and learning in general.)

Moral of the story, then, is perhaps that the real loser is the public: paying for increased security, losing access to the stolen items, but critically - being denied access at all for legitimate inquiry, thereby making a mockery of the purpose of the institutions in the first place.

The best possible thing would be to digitize the originals... this removes the need to visit by making them more accessible, allows backups to secure against disaster, theft or loss by other means, and increases the value of the originals (because people know they exist, cite and use them). British Library want some godawful amount like 400GBP to photograph old images they hold. It's daylight bloody robbery, especially coming from these colonial countries that stole their damn holdings. The EU should force libraries to digitize this stuff.

<comment><USER10> I can't see a reason a Freedom of Information Act request wouldn't be proper against the contents of BL held photographs assuming the photos are out of copyright.

[http://www.bl.uk/aboutus/foi/overview/](http://www.bl.uk/aboutus/foi/overview/)

However, I'm sure the BL have lawyers standing by ready to stop you under one of the mentioned - but not disclosed - "exemptions" in the above link.

<comment><USER7> The "freedom" they refer to there is probably "free as in libre", not "free as in gratis" \- they are allowed to provide you with that information, and if it's public-domain you can do whatever you want with it afterwards, but they are allowed to charge you for the labour of doing it.

<comment><USER10> AIUI under FoI they can charge an admin fee, IIRC that's of the order of £10. That would be considerably cheaper than £400 mentioned.

<a few seconds of research ensues ...>

[https://www.justice.gov.uk/information-access-rights/foi- gui...](https://www.justice.gov.uk/information-access-rights/foi-guidance-for- practitioners/fees) mentions £25 per hour. Assuming that the images are already on BL computers somewhere then them providing a link or sending them by email would likely be a couple of minutes; with admin certainly within the hour.

FoI is about free-libre but they can't put financial blocks in the way as that's undemocratic, it would make the FoI only accessible to the rich.

<comment><USER7> _Assuming that the images are already on BL computers somewhere then them providing a link or sending them by email would likely be a couple of minutes; with admin certainly within the hour._

I read his comment as meaning they haven't digitised them (yet), and BL wants £400 to do it. Not that I agree with charging that much as I think they should've done that already, but if he's asking for a bunch of large, old, and fragile images, it could be delicate and time-consuming work.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Tierra experiment: good old times evolution simulator - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tierra_(computer_simulation)

<comment><AUTHOR> For those who never heard about Tierra. I bumped into it today, and it reminded me of the times I was fascinated by this experiment and was playing with similar ideas. Old school.</comment>